My definition of insanity…
1) Competitive team sports for kids under 10
2) Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome
3) Any diet with one ingredient
4) 24-hour “news”
5) Our tax code
6) “Gifted” children… How do they know?
7) Thin thighs in thirty days
8) High heels
What’s your definition of insanity?
Missy Park
Founder
My definition of insanity …
1) Women who get so much plastic surgery they are no longer recognizable
2) Spanx for men
3) Living seriously beyond one’s means
4) Manscaping
5) Parents who push their children into serious competitive sports all for scholarships – childhoods are lost!
6) Discrimination
7) Girls who bully one another
I am a parent myself, but I didn’t have the same reactions that other moms did. You didn’t know number 6 would hit such a nerve, did you? I read and reread your list 5 times, and I still didn’t get the firestorms. The reactions were so out of context.
My definition of insanity: Kids living their parents’ unrealized lives.
Just got my first catalog ever from you. Shocked by the Insanity list! What were you thinking, attacking gifted children? “How do they know??” Let’s see, maybe telling their first joke at age 10 (nonverbally), at age 4 asking about and comprehending at the first explanation the concept of base-10 number placement with commas and subtraction of those numbers up to the trillion column, reading first-grade books at age 3, or 6th grade books at age 6, or having a 9th grade vocabulary and comprehension at age 5, or always testing in the top 1% (99th%tile), or having incredible inventions that save lives, or discovering DNA… etc. What is your issue with the term gifted? (rhetorical) I’ll never buy anything from you with that attitude. You are spreading disrespect of gifted children, many of whom are AHEM girls!!! Hello, Title 9!! How can that ever be considered to be supportive of active women/girls?? Foolish business move.
Missy, Missy, Missy. You’re not listening.
Try this: Title IX was written because women didn’t have equal opportunities in athletics. They were being barred from learning and excelling.
Very intelligent children have the same problem. When schools force them to repeat stuff they learned two years ago, they are holding these children back, just like sexist policies in 1968 held girls back in sports.
If you don’t think this can be damaging, try spending six or seven hours “learning” stuff you already know really well (e.g. do basic sums like 1+4 for an hour, then try reading sentences like “Run, Jane, run!” for an hour). Seriously. Do that for six hours. Then do it again the next day. Then keep doing it for ten months. Then take the summer off and enjoy yourself and start all over again in September. Remember to start with 1+4, because schools review last year’s stuff until November.
Talent is real. High intelligence is real. Gifted children have a right to be challenged in school (yet you are saying they don’t, just like men said that women didn’t have a right to compete in, say, ski jumping at the Olympics).
“I, for one, think we may be better off teaching all kids to learn, to compete and to work within a community of people much like the ones they will no doubt have to learn, compete and work with as adults.”
Ah yes, this is the same argument people used when trying to dissuade me from attending a women’s college. We’re all going to end up in the real world, anyway, so we would be best served by spending our formative years in a setting that mirrors that real world.
Two points:
First, a primary or secondary school classroom is about as artificial an environment as you can get. When was the last time YOU spent all day every day with 20-30 people your own exact age? As long as our kids are spending their childhoods in an entirely unnatural setting, why not have that setting be determined by ability, rather than age? I’m not necessarily advocating that. But it would be about as close to “a community of people much like the ones they will no doubt have to learn, compete and work with as adults” as a community of people born only in 1998.
Second, there is evidence to suggest that spending one’s formative years in an environment geared to one’s needs improves both learning and self-confidence — which contributes to success later in life. Take the case of women’s colleges. While only 2.5 percent of female college students choose to attend single-sex institutions, graduates of those institutions account for 24 percent of US members of Congress and one third of the female board members of Fortune 1000 companies. (http://www.womenscolleges.org/)
The advantages appear to hold true for younger students as well. Studies have shown that primary and secondary school students in single-sex institutions perform better and develop greater confidence than those in coeducational institutions. (http://www.ncgs.org/aboutgirlsschools/thereasearch/3-girlsfirstforemost/)
Your argument would suggest, however, that graduates of women’s colleges like Hillary Clinton and Madeline Albright would have been better served had they been educated “within a community of people much like the ones they [have had] to learn, compete and work with as adults.”
Do you have any evidence to support that argument?
OK, first the misstatement of facts:
Michael Jordan was named Outstanding Athlete at Trask Middle School, with certificates of achievement in football and basketball.
Albert Einstein was a good student. His mother said in a letter that he was “number one” in his class in 2nd grade. OK, so his mom’s not the best judge, but Einstein had good grades from an early age. It may be that some of his teachers found him unexceptional; parents of gifted kids will tell you that it is not uncommon for deep thinkers to be thought slow.
Next, on to the confusion between “gifted” and “successful.” A gifted child is not one who is destined for success. A gifted child is one whose brain works in an untypical way, which allows them to assimilate material faster than others. And yes, it can be measured.
As to how we know our kids are gifted, I’d invite you to check out
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/parent_of.htm
To some people, these are stories may seem like parents bragging. But for parents of gifted kids, they are humorous anecdotes, because we see our kids in them.
If you want serious info on identifying gifted kids:
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/identification.htm
Parents of gifted kids have a tiger by the tail, and proper labeling helps us keep up.
I can’t stand the term “gifted.” It makes my skin crawl. Always has. So I suppose I’m precisely the sort of person who should be cheering you on.
Unfortunately, you left your credibility in tatters midway through the third paragraph, with your assertion: “Most researchers agree that we are laughably bad at assessing giftedness.”
Why?
Well, first, barring a comprehensive survey and subsequent tabulation of all education researchers (or whatever researchers you have in mind), one cannot assert that “most” researchers believe “x.” (Of course, it would be splendid if you could cite one peer-reviewed study to support your claim. But, as I’m not sure such a study actually exists, I might be asking a lot. In any event, next time you feel the need to resort to hyperbole, use “many” instead of “most.” It’ll keep people like me from writing a paragraph like this.)
Second, you compound the self-inflicted damage with your assertion that these “researchers agree” that our efforts are “laughably bad.” Now, I am not an academic, but I do have a pretty deep familiarity with field research methodology in the social sciences. I can state, with a high degree of confidence, that the adverb “laughably” is rarely found in the literature — especially in the characterization of conclusions with which “most researchers agree.” In fact, I can’t recall a time I’ve ever encountered it.
Am I splitting hairs? Many — perhaps “most” — might say that I am. But, as one with a predisposition to take your side on this subject, I did want to point to the early warning signs suggesting that you weren’t to be taken seriously.
There’s not much point to a further deconstruction of your “argument.” Suffice it to say, I found it as rigorous and provocative as your aforementioned survey of the state of current research on the subject. But I am curious about one thing:
At the end of your post, you state:
“I, for one, think we may be better off teaching all kids to learn, to compete and to work within a community of people much like the ones they will no doubt have to learn, compete and work with as adults.”
Just for fun, would you kindly elaborate?
Thanks …
You say, “So if we are not good at assessing giftedness and we are not good at teaching to giftedness, I am not sure what purpose the label serves. I, for one, think we may be better off teaching all kids to learn, to compete and to work within a community of people much like the ones they will no doubt have to learn, compete and work with as adults.”
Do you actually not believe in the pursuit of excellence? You think that because in many instances we currently fail to do a good job teaching children with special needs (in this case, children with extraordinary academic abilities), we should stop trying? Instead of trying to do more, and do it better? Doesn’t that fly in the face of your very brand, which I thought might have something to do with improvement? Because our system “misses” some children in its assessments, we shouldn’t do them?
Teaching gifted children without regard to their unique needs is commensurate to making high school children learn their academics with elementary school children. This does not make sense.
By the way, yes, all people need to learn to deal with all different types of people in life (personalities, ability levels, political beliefs, ages, ethnicities, etc, etc), but actually, career-wise, there are times when this isn’t particularly true. NASA scientists tend to work with other gifted adults. But everyone needs to know how to respectfully communicate with all sorts of people. You might think about that when you write these messages in your catalog, speaking to a wide audience, and you could think about respecting a wide range of viewpoints–many of which may be more expert than your own!
You lost a customer today. It’s that simple.